Provided by: University of Washington School of Public Health & Community MedicineTopic: MobilityDate Added: May 2012Format: PDF

In habitat monitoring applications, when a sensor node detects an endangered animal, e.g., a panda, it reports the animal's presence and activities to the sink. However, the adversaries can eavesdrop on the network transmissions and make use of the traffic information to locate pandas to hunt them. In this paper, the authors first define hotspot phenomenon that causes an obvious inconsistency in the network traffic pattern due to the large volume of packets originated from a small spot. Second, they develop a realistic adversary model assuming that the adversary can monitor the network traffic in multiple areas rather than the entire network or only one area.